Tickle v1.1 for Mac OS X

From the makers of HSTracker

Changes since v1.0.2 - email alerts
Changes since v1.0.1 - simplified installation process, improved documentation

News: Tickle awarded 5 stars by sofotex

Instructions

Tickle is a very simple script that dials home at startup and every 5 minutes thereafter. It sends information back to a web server that can help identify your computer's location if it is stolen or lost.

The script works whether a user is logged in or not, as long as the computer has an internet connection.

It does so using a web server to look for 'tickles' from a stolen computer. When a tickle is received, the web server will send you an email message containing its current IP address.

If the computer is stolen, you simply need to edit the file tickle-conf.php on your web server and add your computer's MAC address to the waiting list. If the web server receives a tickle you will be sent an email alert.

You can also look for the IP address with that MAC address in your web server logs to help the authorities locate your computer if it's stolen.

If you like this product you should check our other apps at: http://www.hstracker.com

Keep Your Privacy

Tickle works by 'tickling' your user-defined private web hosting service, it therefore never transmits any information to anyone except to the owner or an agent of the owner of the computer. As long as your web logs are password protected your computer location information is secure. The information is not disclosed to any third-party as can be verified by checking the source code.

Requirements:

Mac with OS X 10.4 or later
Web hosting service with access to logs, php required for mail alerts

This utility is free and is provided without any support or warranty. You may modify the code as much as you like.

Installation:

Simply run the installer. When this installer completes you need to:

1. Edit the web server address in /Applications/Utilities/Tickle/tickle.sh on the client using a text editor
2. Copy the files in /Applications/Utilities/Tickle/web to your web server
3. Restart

The Tickle installer saves a plain text file in /Applications/Utilities/Tickle/MacAddress.txt. You should make a separate note of the mac address in case your computer is stolen. This number will later be used to identify your computer.

The installer also creates two PHP documents in a folder called /Applications/Utilities/Tickle/web. Upload these files to the root directory of your web site - typically named public-html, Sites or Documents.

Locating your computer

To view the tickles you need access to your web server logs where a 'tickle' will take the form:

ip_addr - - [date] "GET /tickle.php?mac=mac_addr HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "curl/version"

Example:

65.44.1.4 - - [03/Sep/2008:19:51:45 +0100] GET /tickle.php?mac=0012a50bcc82 HTTP/1.1

Note that the colons in the MAC address are not displayed in the log. The ip address could be used by the police or other authorities to locate the computer.

Receiving Email Alerts from a Stolen Computer

If one of your computers is stolen, open the file tickle-conf.php on the web server and insert the mac address of the stolen computer into one of the available slots. Up to 10 computers may be tracked at any time. Enter your email address and save the file.

Example:

<?php
   $to = "hstracker@gal.co.uk";
   $waitfor[0] = "002a95d834e4";
   $waitfor[1] = "no one";
   $waitfor[2] = "no one";
   $waitfor[3] = "no one";
   $waitfor[4] = "no one";
   $waitfor[5] = "no one";
   $waitfor[6] = "no one";
   $waitfor[7] = "no one";
   $waitfor[8] = "no one";
   $waitfor[9] = "no one";
   ?>

Tip - you may want to create a Guest account on your computer with very limited privileges. This may prompt the unauthorised user to login and go online.

Another Tip - you can setup your home desktop to track your laptop, using web sharing on the desktop.

Technical Details:

Tickle installer places five files in your system

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.galcon.tickler.plist
/Applications/Utilities/Tickle/tickle.sh
/Applications/Utilities/Tickle/MacAddress.txt
/Applications/Utilities/Tickle/web/tickle.php
/Applications/Utilities/Tickle/web/tickle-conf.php

You must edit tickle.sh to enter the address of your web server.

Tickle does not run as a background process. It uses the system launch services to run a tiny script with minimal cpu and bandwidth requirements. You should not notice any difference in the performance of your computer, even if it's a rather old and slow one.

Troubleshooting

If you come across permission errors, you can solve this in several ways:

1. Use Disk Utility to repair permissions on your startup disk
2. Use a text editor like Text Wrangler (free download)
3. Use the terminal to edit the file using pico or similar utility (sudo pico)

Uninstall

Simply move all the files listed above to the trash and restart.

Download Tickle for Mac

Download HSTracker Mac demo

Last updated September 21, 2008

Ofir Gal and Gal Consultancy Ltd have been providing IT services for more than a decade. Their customers include ie:music, airside, trmg, robbie williams, the gaia foundation, onedotzero and others. In the early 90s, Ofir authored GemBench which became the standard benchmark for the Atari ST platform (RIP) and was the technical editor of Atari World magazine. Following that he also contributed to Mac Action, Mac Format and Sound On Sound magazines. Since then he moved on to systems integration and database development and made various contribution to the Mac community, most notably the manual for the open source radmind project – one of the best mass deployment tools for OS X.